Knowing and 
Teaching the Scholar 

A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D. D. 



1 he 1 lmes 


Handbooks 


for Sunday 


-School 


Workers. 


Number O 



Class. I: _J 

Book. 

Copyright^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



nowing and Teachin 
the Scholar 



BY 

A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D.D. 



The Sunday School Times Company 
philadelphia 



Copyright. 1909. 
By The Sunday School Times Company 



CONTEXTS 

I 

The Study of the Child 

II 

The Five Gates of Approach to the Mind — 

Object Teaching 

Ill 

The Five Gates of Approach to the Mind — 

Blackboard Work 

IV 

Hand work in Teaching 

V 

The Teacher's Work Outside of School . . 

VI 

Conversion and Culture of the Scholar . 



I 



THE STUDY OF THE CHILD 

There are merits and defects in modern child 
study. Not that child study is exclusively mod- 
ern, because from the days that mothers have had 
children they have studied them. But in modern 
times we have put emphasis on the study of the 
child as it matures from earliest years till the 
time of the completion of its growth. 

One of the methods of modern child study is 
the Questionnaire. A questionnaire is a series of 
questions, sometimes scores in number, that are 
printed and sent out by the thousands to be 
answered, either by children themselves, or by 
their teachers or parents. These papers are then 
collected, the answers are tabulated, and from 
those answers the desires, ambitions and concep- 
tions of childhood in various stages are in some 
measure made clear. 

There is danger in this questionnaire method, 
however, against which the intelligent worker 
must ever be on his guard. Children are not 
always capable of giving right answers to the 

i 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

questions that are propounded, nor are adults 
always successful in responding truthfully to the 
questions which call for the record of living chil- 
dren or for that given by memory of their own 
childhood. 

As an example of a misleading questionnaire, I 
give the following: A professor in a New England 
institution sent out a questionnaire to ascertain 
what was the spontaneous interest of children in 
Bible scenes, characters and stories. Eleven thou- 
sand of these papers were sent out. When they 
were returned the tabulation was made. It then 
turned out that the most popular character in the 
Bible was John the Evangelist, which was rather 
perplexing to a thoughtful man. Among the 
fifteen most popular characters the Virgin Mary 
appeared, which also gave pause to a careful 
student of the pamphlet. 

It occurred to me then to write to the profes- 
sor to ask when the questionnaire was sent out, 
and I found it was in the second half of 1899. I 
then went to the first half of 1899 to see what the 
Sunday-school lessons of that time dealt with, 
and I found that they dealt with the Gospel of 
John. Then I knew why John turned out the 
most popular character in all the Bible. For six 
months teachers had been dinning John, John, 
into their scholars' minds. At that moment the 
professor turns the faucet, and out runs John. 

2 



The Study of the Child 



Children's interest in John as the most popular 
character in the Bible is not spontaneous, and 
thus the whole questionnaire, so far as that partic- 
ular question was concerned, ran on the sidetrack. 
It then occurred to me to send another question, 
asking whether any Catholic communities had 
the questionnaire sent to them. The response was 
Yes, into certain French-Canadian communities 
in New England this questionnaire had gone. 
Then I saw instantly why Mary the Virgin rank- 
ed among the fifteen most popular characters. It 
was not spontaneous interest, but imparted inter- 
est, that was betokened by these questions, though 
the professor thought differently. 

I then did some little tabulation on my own 
account and I found that of the nine hundred and 
eighty-one votes cast for the most popular person 
in the Bible, four hundred and seventy-six votes 
were for persons with whom in the six months 
previous the International Lessons had been deal- 
ing. That vitiated the results of all his ques- 
tionnaire. 

Never accept the tabulated results of a ques- 
tionnaire about children, therefore, unless you put 
the questionnaire in the witness box and examine 
that first. Then you will be able to know whether 
the results are reliable or misleading. 

This questionnaire method has been carried to 
very absurd extremes. I have seen a questionnaire 

3 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



with regard to dolls, making inquiry as to whether 
the children preferred wax dolls, rubber dolls, 
rag dolls or china dolls; colored dolls or white 
dolls; whether the children's dolls were ever 
sick; if so, what medicine was given; whether 
they ever died ; if so, where they went. Supposing 
that out of a thousand children, seven hundred 
prefer rag dolls, and one hundred china dolls, and 
two hundred rubber dolls, what have you reached 
of any value? How would such knowledge help 
the parent or teacher? This is questioning gone 
daft. 

So far has this matter gone that one professor 
took a given number of children, putting into the 
hands of each a hot iron. He registered how 
many of the children said, "Ouch" and dropped 
the iron, and how many said "Ugh" and dropped 
the iron, and how many of those that said "Ouch" 
had red hair, and how many had black hair. 

Consequently, we must be on our guard in 
being led without due inquiry by much of this 
modern child-study process. Take, for example, 
questions from a questionnaire on temperament, 
to be answered by adults for children : "Is he a 
warm and intense, or cold and passionless, soul?" 
"Does he get angry or indignant easily?" "Does 
he get over it quickly?" "When he is angry, which 
of the following are characteristic of him: 

"(a) Ready feeling without action; 

4 



The Study of the Child 



"(b) Intense feeling with immediate action; 
''(c) Feeling too feeble to produce very posi- 
tive action ; 

"(d) The tendency to brood over his indigna- 
tion, but not to act ; 

"(e) Tendency to plan deliberate revenge, or 
the improvement of conditions and action to that 
end in cold blood ; 

"(f) Fixed and unchangeable aversion." 

Now, it would take a philosopher to be able to 
answer these questions with regard to any living 
child, for they are psychologically abstruse. It is 
impossible to analyze any child so as to present a 
rational response to questioning of this type. 

While I am on this theme I might say that I 
received from Clark University, whose president, 
Stanley Hall, was a classmate of mine, a question- 
naire, through which he desired to study the psy- 
chology of the conversion of adults, and particu- 
larly of rescued men. "Rescued'' men are those 
saved from drink or drugs. I wrote him back, 
saying, "The men cannot understand these ques- 
tions/' He then sent a professor to persuade me 
to present the questionnaire to men of that type. 
He said, "We know what we are about, you know 
the men ; get the answers." My reply was, "You 
will get no answers because they cannot under- 
stand the questions." Some of these questions, tc 
be put to men who (in some cases) did not know 

5 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



how to read when they were converted, and 
none of whom had a good education, were as 
follows : 

"State your age at each period of marked re- 
ligious awakening in your life ? 

"Indicate in a word what each of these periods 
of awakening led to, as, for example, conversion, 
sanctification, joining the church, etc. ? 

"If you have passed through one or more sim- 
ilar momentous moral crises, indicate and describe 
each one in detail." 

I sent them out and got two answers, one from 
S. H. Hadley, in which he simply said, "I do not 
understand these questions ; enclosed find a tract, 
entitled 'My First and Last Drink' ; maybe that 
will do." That tract was the story of his first 
drink as a child and his last drink on his way to 
drown himself in the river, when he stumbled into 
the Cremorne Mission and was converted. 

The other response was from John Yaeger, a 
man who had "drunk up three teams," as he said, 
before he was converted. He came to the office 
and said, "What does this mean? I cannot under- 
stand." I said, "John, they want to know how 
you were converted." "Oh," said he, "I cannot 
write it out, but a lady comes to the Mission, I 
will tell her the story and she can write it out;" 
and that was all the response I got. 

One of the contentions of a part of the modern 
6 



The Study of the Child 



paidological school is this, that children, by nature 
being selfish, must not be taught altruistic virtues 
or have altruistic characters presented to them 
until they reach the period of adolescence, when 
naturally the altruistic virtues come to the front ; 
and President Stanley Hall said in my presence as 
I was debating paidology with him in Worcester 
before a large audience, "I would not present 
Christ to the child at all until it reaches the period 
of adolescence ;' ? and then shrugging his shoul- 
ders, he said, "except, perhaps, at Christmas or 
Easter." 

That is modern paidology gone mad., for if 
the child be violent and selfish in its early years, 
as is in a measure true, all the more reason why 
we should present the altruistic characters and 
inculcate altruistic virtues. The-e are some of 
the defects of modern paidology. It has, how- 
ever, very great excellencies, and here I want to 
recommend very strongly to you, unless you have 
already read it, a little book, one of the sanest 
and best I have ever seen. "The Unfolding Life,'' 
by Mrs. Lamoreaux. The publishers are The 
Religious Publishing Company, 192 Michigan 
Avenue, Chicago. 

Among the valuable results of child study is 
the knowledge of the developing nature of the 
child. The wonder of it is that, having been 
children, we have forgotten it all. and have again 

7 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



to delve into the past to reproduce our own 
experiences and thus enable us to remember and 
sympathize with the child. 

One excellent way for you to study the child 
life is by the simple use of your memory. When 
I was a boy I had saved a dollar. I saw a rubber 
balloon in a window, inquired the price and found 
it was a dollar I said to my father, "I want the 
balloon, I have got a dollar." He said, "Oh, my 
boy, I would not waste my money." I insisted. 
He yielded. I paid the dollar and got the balloon 
and was happy. I took it home and lorded it over 
my older brothers who had no balloon. I let it up 
to the ceiling at night and got up early in the 
morning to look for it, and it was not there. 
Under the table it was, burst. Then burst my 
heart. My dollar was gone ; my balloon was gone ; 
all was gone, and life had no meaning. Then my 
brothers laughed at me and I hated them. A 
childish tragedy, but the memory of it brings me 
into sympathy with the tragic in the child life of 
to-day, and the child and I become one again. 

When I was twelve my parents came to this 
country, stayed a year and returned. I went to 
the steamer to meet them and when my mother 
had kissed me she put her hands on my shoulders 
and stood me back and said, "Why, Fred, how 
you have grown." An Englishman standing by 
her side said, "Yes, ill weeds grow apace." I 

8 



The Study of the Child 



hated him, for he stabbed me undeservedly. I 
said nothing. Had he, however, been my Sunday- 
school teacher I would have led him a life after 
that. I expect certainly to meet him in Heaven, 
but just as certainly the first thing that I shall 
think of when I see him is, You said, "111 weeds 
grow apace." 

Study what others have discovered. This child 
in front of you is the most interesting thing in 
the world. It is also the most difficult thing to 
study because always changeable. Xo two chil- 
dren have ever been exactly alike, just as no two 
leaves of a maple tree are exactly alike ; but all 
children of given ages are generically alike as all 
leaves on maple trees are generically alike. It is 
for us to study these likenesses at different ages 
and these divergencies so that we may handle the 
children deftly, as workmen w T ho need not to be 
ashamed. 

Take some of these similarities in child life: 
In the early period, roughly speaking, from one to 
five, all children are egoistic. That is to say, 
everything centers around the ego of the child — 
my pain; my play; my doll; my food. Ego 
stands to the front and the child is satisfied in 
considerable measure to amuse itself alone with 
its playthings. The child is unconcerned with 
regard to others. I have seen in a sweet Chris- 
tian household a child of four sitting on the floor 

9 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



and playing with her dolly, while at the same 
moment her older sister was in their mother's 
arms screaming with pain. But the little one 
was not disturbed. She had not any pain. That 
was sister's pain. Let sister take care of her pain. 

Later on, from five, say. there develops the 
social instinct rather markedly. Children now are 
not anxious to play alone. The sexes mingle on a 
basis of equality, but the social element comes to 
the front. Still the egoistic remains, for the 
games, which show the tendencies of the children 
more than anything else, are egoistic games. It is 
"Blind man's buff;' 5 "I am in. you are out" It is 
"Puss, puss, in the corner ;" "I am in. you are 
out." It is "Marbles, I have got 'em, you have 
lost them." It is still the personal, the ego, that 
dominates. 

Later on you find the social developing into the 
altruistic. Xow comes the time for the team 
games when a boy learns to subordinate himself 
for the larger unit of the team. That is a decided 
advance toward altruism. Xow the child recog- 
nizes that there is something bigger than the 
ego, and is willing to put himself in the back- 
ground that the larger unit may be brought to the 
front. 

About the time of the appearance of adoles- 
cence the sexes begin to converge. Before that 
they diverged, and the boys nine. ten. eleven, 

10 



The Study of the Child 



twelve, would not play with the girls. They called 
the girls "sissies," and the girls called the boys 
"mean/' and they were satisfied to be apart. Now 
five yoke of oxen cannot keep them apart. The 
trend is toward each other, and in a kind of shame- 
faced way the boy is happy to go home from 
Sunday-school with the girl, and the girl is happy 
to have him; and if the girl has two boys who 
want to go home with her then she is in the third 
heaven. This is the beginning of the period of 
"stress and storm, " as it is called, when they are 
budding out into young manhood and young 
womanhood, when a whole new world is open- 
ing up. 

That is a time of extreme importance in the 
work of the teacher and of great anxiety on the 
part of the mother. "Now or never/' it is, in our 
wholesome influence over them. 

There are certain characteristics which are com- 
mon to all children, though some possess them 
more intensely than others, but all have them. The 
first of these is plasticity. Children are like clay, 
easily mouldable. If any one does not believe that 
children are plastic, take a Sunday-school class 
of six good boys, and admit one foul-mouthed, 
vile boy, and watch. You will never again doubt 
the plasticity of childhood, when you have seen 
how that vile boy moulds the others. This, how- 
ever, is also one of our encouragements. You 

1 1 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



cannot teach an old dog new tricks, and a piece 
of baked clay may be broken, but it cannot be 
moulded. A child, however, may be moulded into 
a form of marvelous beauty. 

All children are mercurial. By mercurial, I 
mean that they are not long in one state. It is 
cruelty to want a child to sit still. God did not 
make them that way. A German philosopher can 
evolve ideas out of his inner consciousness for 
two hours on end standing on one foot, but a 
child cannot. This is one of our perplexities, but 
it is the law of child nature, and all our teaching, 
therefore, must be adapted to that law. This is 
why we vary our exercises with the little ones so 
constantly. 

Children are all of them swift; of course, some 
more so than others, but that is characteristic of 
all, and it is one of our difficulties that we are 
so mortally slow and they are so furiously fast. 

I saw a notice up on the roundhouse of a rail- 
way company one time which read, "No engineer 
allowed to take his engine out of this roundhouse 
with less than 120 pounds of steam on/' and I 
felt like preparing a notice for my Sunday-school 
as follows : "No teacher allowed to go to her 
class with less than 120 pounds of steam on." 
For the boys come with their boilers bursting and 
the teacher comes with the water not lukewarm. 
So the boy takes teacher, class and all, and runs 

12 



The Study of the Child 



them on to a siding. It is the teacher's fault. And 
then the teacher says, "Ugh, this class!" There 
is never a teacher says, "Ugh, this class!" but 
there is a class that says, "Ah, this teacher!" It 
is a poor rule that doesn't work both ways. 

The stories of the swiftness of American chil- 
dren are endless but are instructive. A Boston 
lady told me one time that a Boston boy, being 
asked to give the principal parts of the verb go, 
said, "Go, went, got there.' 7 I brought that to 
Xew York and told it to my brother, who is one 
of the superintendents of public schools here, as 
a specimen of the Boston swiftness. He replied, 
4 'That is nothing. A New York boy was asked 
to compare the adjective sick, and he said, 'Sick, 
worse, dead.' " 

Professor George Adam Smith told me this 
story of a professor of psychology: It was his 
habit to pounce on children and ask them some 
ridiculous question, to see how long it would take 
the child to pull itself together and give some kind 
of an answer. They were on the streets of New 
Haven one day, when the professor of psychology 
pounced on a newsboy and said, "Sonny, what 
time is it by your nose?" and the boy promptly 
said, "Mine ain't running. Is yours?" 

All children are imaginative. They love to 
make believe. They live in an ideal world, and it 
is for the teacher to appeal to that imagination as 

13 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



the teacher's best helper in reproducing biblical 
scenes. The child is willing enough if you be but 
clever enough. If you enlist the child's imagina- 
tion even with a few marks on the blackboard the 
child becomes your co-worker, and in that way 
builds up the narrative, the parable, the miracle, 
until it becomes to the child a living thing and the 
child is almost actor — certainly spectator — in the 
scene. We ought with the utmost of our power to 
cultivate in ourselves this imaginative faculty, so 
that we may effectively make use of that char- 
acteristic of childhood which is wondrously help- 
ful. The children are searching for objects on 
which they can bring their imagination to bear. 
For example : 

A little girl eating pancakes cut a big piece and 
cut a little piece, and she called the little piece 
"baby" and she called the big piece "mamma." 
Then she swallowed the little piece and at once 
said, "Don't cry, baby, mamma is coming direct- 
ly." What a vision that gives us of the child 
imagination ! 

All children have a keen sense of justice. One 
of the earliest things you will hear in the nursery 
is, " 'Tain't fair." Not that all children love jus- 
tice when they have to exercise it, but that all love 
to have it exercised toward them, and they dis- 
criminate quickly between just and unjust treat- 
ment. A child rarely complains of punishment if 

14 



The Study of the Child 



the punishment be just, but will always complain 
if it be unjust. In all our treatment of children, 
therefore, this sense of justice must be carefully 
ministered to. Partiality in the class or in the 
nursery is a source of dire misery. A child who 
to-day is punished for some offense which yester- 
day went unpunished is a child whom you have 
injured both by your action of yesterday and your 
action of to-day. 

Children are imitative. Unconsciously there is 
in them a tendency to reproduce what they see 
in others. If the teacher is late the child will be 
late. If the teacher is disorderly the child will be 
disorderly. Sometimes if the teacher is peculiarly 
tasteful in dress the girls will imitate her dress as 
far as they can. All the time unconsciously w T e 
are making an impress upon these young lives 
which they are trying again to express. How im- 
portant, therefore, that the impress should be 
faultless, so that when they reproduce what they 
see in us it may be to their very great advantage. 

This brings us to our next point, that all chil- 
dren are affectionate. Alas, for that teacher who 
has grown so far away from childhood that the 
child does not reach out with the tendrils of af- 
fection toward the teacher. Children are like 
vines. They need something to cling to that they 
may get up into the sunlight and air. Mrs. Lamo- 
reaux beautifully says that the child does not act 

*5 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

from knowledge, but from desire and affection. 
If, then, we aim only at the child's head and not 
at the child's heart, we are missing the Gibraltar 
of our effort. Out of the heart are the issues of 
life for the child as well as for the adult. 

In the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church a 
former pastor was examining a young woman for 
church membership, and he said, "How did you 
find the Saviour?" She answered, "First, I loved 
my teacher, then I loved my teacher's Bible and 
then I loved my teacher's Saviour." Sweet syllo- 
gism of the heart if not of the head. Led by love, 
the child went from the lower into the higher life. 

Children may be heroic. Here again we fall 
into a blunder, thinking that we must be adults 
before we can be heroes. Xo greater mistake than 
this can be made. The boy David was as grand 
a hero as the king David ; nay, grander, because 
the boy David never fell into the sin that King 
David plunged into. The boy Joseph was as 
heroic as the Prime Minister Joseph, and dared 
anything rather than do wrong. The boy Daniel 
was as courageous and heroic as the man Daniel. 

The fact is that when a child sees its duty and 
makes up its mind to do it, it will do it more 
grandly, irrespective of consequences, than the 
adult. The adult, seeing duty, begins to ask, "If 
I do it what will be the consequence on my 
career?" or "What will my friends say of me?" 

16 



The Study of the Child 



or "Shall I lose financially if I stand for duty?" 
The child is not apt to ask these questions, but, 
seeing the pathway of duty, is far more apt to 
start straight down that pathway, come what 
may. I have seen that over and over again in the 
actual handling of children. 

These are some of the characteristics of child- 
hood, and we must study them carefully so as to 
see how, passing from ages three to six, or six 
to nine, or nine to twelve, or twelve to fifteen, or 
fifteen on, the everchanging kaleidoscope of the 
child's life presents varying forms and beauties. 

Opportunities change, but always exist, and it 
is for the sanctified and consecrated teacher to 
watch these opportunities. There is nothing in 
the world so entrancing as a child. In Genesis 
we read that when God created the heaven and 
the earth he saw everything, that it was good. 
When, however, man appeared, the record is that 
God saw that it was very good. Sun, moon, 
stars, vegetable life, animals — good. It took man 
to make it very good, and of shattered humanity 
the child is the best, because it has in it most of 
potentiality, and we as teachers of children have 
got the finest thing in existence upon which to 
expend our effort. 

In all this we need, of course, the aid of the 
Divine Spirit, who, first in us, and then in the 
child, produces the spiritual life and nurtures it 

17 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



until it blossoms out into the full efflorescence of 
Christian manhood and womanhood. But in all 
this labor we must understand the material on 
which we work in order that the tools that we use 
and the efforts that we expend may be aimed at 
the right result ; then with the divine blessing the 
fruitage of Christian lives will not be wanting. 



iS 



II 



THE FIVE GATES OF APPROACH TO 
THE MIND— OBJECT TEACHING 

In a seat sits the scholar; in front of him sits 
the teacher. The teacher's aim is to reach the 
scholar's personality. There are only five gates 
of entrance to that personality. Bear in mind that 
the teacher has never seen the scholar and never 
will, nor has the scholar ever seen the teacher, for 
our personalities are forever concealed from all 
human view. We have seen each other's faces 
and garments — that is all. To reach the scholar, 
one or more of these five gates of entrance must 
be utilized. They are eye-gate, ear-gate, nose-gate, 
mouth-gate and touch-gate. In the last analysis, 
physiologically, all these reduce themselves to 
touch, because the waves created by the human 
voice must touch the tympanum before they can 
be translated to thought. The light waves must 
touch the retina before they convey any impres- 
sion. The fingers must touch the object before 
they can understand anything about its constitu- 
tion. The particles of perfume must touch the 

19 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



mucous membrane in the olfactory department, 
and the particles of food must touch the organ of 
taste in the mouth before they translate them- 
selves. But for our purposes we stand by the 
five-fold division that we have made. In early 
life the major part of the facts which find en- 
trance to the human mind do so through eye-gate. 
The child looks and looks and looks again. When, 
however, the child cannot through the eye under- 
stand what it sees, then follows the question, 
"What is it?" Then the child opens ear-gate for 
the answer to its question, that the truth entering 
through ear-gate may explain the mystery that at- 
tacked eye-gate, but did not find intelligent recep- 
tion. Bar out all that you and I have learned 
through eye-gate and ear-gate, and how small a 
residuum there will be. It is true that in cases 
like that of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller 
where eye-gate and ear-gate are closed, facts 
march in through touch-gate in armies, because 
persons so situated are obliged to have recourse to 
touch to interpret to them the outside world. Our 
touch is gross and clumsy and blundering com- 
pared with the touch of Helen Keller because we 
are not forced to touch-gate to interpret to us ex- 
ternal nature. We, however, far more swiftly 
than these two persons named, reach the external 
world and interpret to ourselves its phenomena 
because eye-gate and ear-gate are open to us. It 

20 



Object Teaching 



is a significant fact for the teacher that when 
eye-gate and ear-gate are appealed to simultane- 
ously, but in contrary directions, eye-gate will 
have the right of way always, and what attacks 
ear-gate will be pushed to the wall. Set up on the 
platform the most brilliant orator that you 
choose. Let him appeal to your ears. Permit me 
to stand by his side and say nothing but appeal to 
your eyes only. I will ruin his work and make it 
impossible for him to do anything intelligently 
with you, because the facts that march in through 
eye-gate come so easily and swiftly as compared 
with the lumbering gait of facts that attack the 
ear, and we love ease so greatly that we will drop 
attention to that which attacks the ear and fasten 
attention on that which attacks the eye. I care 
not who the orator may be, if you will allow me to 
stand before the audience you could not listen 
to him while I am merely lighting a candle, be- 
cause many thoughts are aroused instantly by 
what you see. Some think, "Where did he get 
the candle from?" while others think, "What is he 
going to do with the candle ?" and still others won- 
der, "Why does he light it at this time?" Thus 
the poor orator is left stranded because eye-gate 
demands attention. Where, however, in our ap- 
proach to man-soul we can combine attack on 
these two gates simultaneously, we secure abso- 
lutely the attention of the scholar. If the child's 

21 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



eyes are attracted and his ears open — I care not 
what assails him, I will have his attention. If, in 
addition to this, I can also attack touch-gate by in- 
ducing him to do something or feel of something, 
all the schemes of the worst boy in the world to 
disturb the class perish, because he is looking, is 
listening, is doing, and that occupies him abso- 
lutely. 

That is the wise teacher, then, who, realizing 
these fundamental principles and these chief ave- 
nues of approach to the human mind, constantly 
utilizes them to the utmost of his ability ; and that 
is the foolish teacher who attacks ear-gate, letting 
sundry other foes attack eye-gate and win the 
victory. All professors in physical science know 
this principle, and all endeavor to illustrate to 
the eye the experiments which in past centuries 
they presented to the ear alone. No man to-day 
will teach a class of adults along the line of physi- 
cal science and omit ocular demonstration if that 
be possible, and the reasons for that are easily 
understood. 

Remembering now this fundamental principle, 
how may we apply it to our work as teachers? 
We may apply it by using all manner of appeals 
to eye-gate in order that we may attract the 
attention of the scholar, impress his mind, fasten 
the truth on his memory and excite his desire to 
action. This brings us to the whole question of 

22 



Object Teaching 



object teaching and object preaching, which are 
the same thing. Now in order that we may suc- 
cessfully use objects to attract the human eye, 
we must first thoroughly grasp the underlying 
principle of all object teaching, namely: 'Every- 
thing material has some likeness to something 
spiritual. Unless the teacher grasps that prin- 
ciple and elaborates it wisely, his use of objects 
will be ill-timed, ill-adjusted, ineffective. It is 
for the teacher to study so as to discern these like- 
nesses. That will not come in a day or a week 
or a month. Patient labor, toil and practise is all 
that will make any one an expert user of things 
material to illustrate things spiritual. Every single 
thing in your room has an analogy with some- 
thing invisible. Study to discern these analogies. 

The writer has sat in his study and many a 
time has picked out any object that was in view 
and forced an analogy between it and something 
spiritual. Now this must be in a measure illus- 
trated. Then it will be for the reader to practise 
along the lines suggested until facility has been 
acquired. Take, for example, a watch. A watch 
is a material object. What likenesses has that 
watch to a boy ? Many. In asking this question 
of a class of boys, one boy promptly said, "It has a 
face." Another reply was, "It has two hands." 
Another one said, "It has got an inside and an 
outside." So has the boy. Question; "Which is 

23 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

more important, the outside of a watch or the 
inside?" Again: "Which is more important, the 
outside of the boy or the inside?" This watch is 
like a boy in that it gets out of order sometimes 
and has to be sent to the right party to put it in 
order. Again : This watch needs to be wound 
every day and the boy's body needs to be wound 
three times a day and sometimes he winds it be- 
tween times; so, too, the boy's mind needs to be 
wound every day, and the business of the public 
school is to wind a boy's mind. So also a boy's 
spirit needs to be wound up every day and God 
does that in answer to prayer. This watch will 
go when nobody is looking just as well as when 
all eyes are on it. Is that so with you? 

You begin to see now what is meant by saying 
that there are analogies or likenesses between 
things material and things spiritual. A few have 
been given from this watch, though so intricate 
a piece of machinery as this afford multitudes 
of analogies between a living, sentient being and 
this mechanical article. 

Sit down, therefore, and pick up anything that 
you like and see what are the swiftly evident 
analogies. 

Take a compass whose sole prerogative it is to 
point north. What is that like? Like God's Word 
whose sole prerogative it is to point right. A 
man lost in the forest who knows that his home 

24 



Object Teaching 



lies northerly, who looks at the compass and yet 
marches southerly, is to blame if he never reaches 
home. A man who sees the way of life pointed 
out in the Bible and takes the opposite course is 
equally to blame if he never reaches eternal life. 

The number of objects which thus furnish 
swiftly analogies for the teacher to use is practi- 
cally endless, because you need not have ornate 
things — the simpler they are the better. I will 
now give some of these suggestive objects. 

Take a magnet. What is the dominant thought 
in a magnet? The dominant thought in the com- 
pass was direction. The dominant thought in the 
magnet is drawing power ; to word it otherwise, 
power unseen but not unfelt. What is that like 
in the spiritual world? Like the power of the 
Spirit of the living God, unseen but not unfelt. 
There the analogy carries you over instantly from 
a material object through its ethereal manifesta- 
tion of power to an unseen personality with his 
manifestation of power. Now pick up a number 
of tacks with the magnet. One tack will draw 
another. This is because it transmits power re- 
ceived from the magnet to the other tack. What 
is the analogy? The believer transmitting power 
to others which he first receives from the divine 
Spirit. Then place a pasteboard between the mag- 
net and the tacks and again it picks them up. Still 
drawing power is manifest. But if there be the 

25 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



least separation between the pasteboard and the 
magnet the tacks will fall. So when between the 
Spirit and my soul there intervenes worldliness, 
power is lost and spiritual failure results. 

Take a toy ladder. What is the ruling thought 
of the ladder? Progress upward step by step. 
There is no governing thought with the ladder 
of the type that we saw with the compass or with 
the magnet, but there is a truth here none the 
less. He who climbs that ladder progresses up- 
ward step by step. Analogy — he who would 
climb intellectually must go upward step by step 
—arithmetic, algebra, conic sections, till you reach 
higher mathematics. He who would progress 
spiritually must follow the same course ; first, the 
bud, then the larger growth and finally the full 
flower. Take a similar ladder with two rungs re- 
moved. Can a man climb this ladder? Nay, he 
has knocked out these two rungs and progress is 
forbidden him. Can the boy who refuses algebra 
get the conic sections? Never. The intervening 
steps are lost. Can the young man who refuses 
common honesty reach the highest standard? 
Never. He has omitted the lower steps and 
progress is impossible. 

In a railroad station I saw three little lanterns. 
One w r as white, one red and one green. What is 
the object of such lanterns? To impart informa- 
tion. What kind of information? Very variant. 

26 



Object Teaching 



What does the white lantern mean on the rail- 
road? "All right; go ahead." What does the 
green light mean? "Caution; slow." What does 
the red light mean? "Stop, now." Are there any 
analogies between these things and any portions 
of the Word of God ? Multitudes. While you are 
on the pathway of duty the Bible hangs out its 
white light,, which means, All right; go ahead. 
When evil companions begin to surround you the 
Bible holds out its green light. Carefully; slowly. 
When temptation directly assails, the red light is 
hung out, Stop, now ! 

Sometimes it is hard for our scholars to under- 
stand that for every idle word that men shall 
speak they shall give account at the day of judg- 
ment, and that by our words we shall be justified 
and by our words we shall be condemned. It is 
hard to grasp the thought that God can remember 
all the words of all the living creatures in all the 
eras of the whole world. Not so hard, however, 
when the scholar realizes that we can preserve 
words. 

Take, for example, a certain gramophone cyl- 
inder on which are recorded the utterances of 
a certain dinner party, many years ago. Two 
years ago I put this again on the gramophone, 
forgetting that one of the members who spoke into 
this had died. Songs, funny speeches, came roll- 
ing out and we sat and laughed. Suddenly the 

27 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



voice of the dead man rang out and our laughter 
perished instantly. We stood aghast, while some 
one said, "Cut it off." The words of that dead 
man were there and will remain there as long as 
that cylinder lasts. What is that like ? Like God's 
larger preservation of the record of every utter- 
ance of every human being from the beginning 
of time to the end. That will illustrate the text 
to which we referred when we said, "For every 
idle word that men shall speak they shall give 
account at the day of judgment." 

Take an aneroid barometer. Barometers 
weigh the air. Scales weigh groceries, our 
bodies, everything visible. This is finer than or- 
dinary scales, for it weighs an invisible thing, 
the air. What is this like in things intellectual ? I 
want to know how much you weigh intellectually. 
This will not tell me. The scales will not tell me ; 
but a written examination paper will. I want 
to know how much you weigh in the scales of 
honesty. How can I find out? I don't know, 
but God knows, for we read in his Word, "I, the 
Lord, weigh the spirits of men." I can weigh the 
invisible air. He weighs my invisible spirit and 
knows just whether I am full weight or short 
weight. He weighed a man by the name of Bel- 
shazzar once and wrote the record on the wall 
and it said "Weighed ; wanting." 

In this whole matter of using objects in our 
28 



Object Teaching 



Sunday-school work we must bear in mind that 
we never may use objects so conspicuous as to 
attract the attention of neighboring classes. If 
in my class, with others around me, I take a match 
out and light it I have ruined the teaching of 
every class that can see that match, because every 
scholar will say : "What under the sun is he doing 
with a match ?" and every teacher will lose the 
attention of her class until the match is blown out. 
We have, therefore to use inconspicuous objects in 
ordinary classes. If we have a room to ourselves, 
anything can be used. If you are reviewing from 
the platform anything can be utilized, because 
there the attention of all is concentrated upon one 
person and there is no competition. But there is 
such a large multitude of these simple objects 
that can be used in the class that the teacher can 
help himself very much more frequently than he 
realizes at first. 

Take, for example, so simple a thing as a spool 
of thread. What is thread made for? To bind 
things together. What is that like in the spiritual 
world? Many things; among others the binding 
force of something we call habit. One strand of 
thread — easily broken; two, a little more diffi- 
cult ; ten, hard. Give me Goliath and let me bind 
his hands round and round until I have used the 
whole spool of thread and he cannot break aw r ay. 
Habit: one drink, easily stopped; two, more dif- 

29 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



ficult; after a year, very hard; after two years, a 
slave- — the increasing power of habit illustrated 
by a thread. 

I would recommend to you certain books for 
your careful study that you may become adepts in 
this matter of attack on eye-gate through objects; 
two by Sylvanus Stall, with the following titles, 
"Talks to the King's Children" and "Five Minute 
Object Sermons to Children';" another by the Rev. 
C. H. Tyndall, "Object Lessons for Children," an- 
other by Mr. Bayley, "Little Ten Minutes." 

Careful study of literature of this kind, com- 
bined with much thought and incubation on your 
part, will slowly open up to you the material world 
in its spiritual significance. This is where Christ 
superabounded in his interpretation of nature — 
a little leaven illustrating the kingdom of God; 
the sower going out to sow illustrating Christian 
preacher and teacher ; the lily, setting forth God's 
wondrous power in painting this wondrous ob- 
ject. All nature appealed to him as it inter- 
preted the invisible, and everything physical was 
to him like something spiritual. 



3° 



Ill 



THE FIVE GATES OF APPROACH TO 
THE MIXD— BLACKBOARD WORK 

There are many Sunday-school superintendents 
who are averse to the use of a blackboard. This 
may arise from one of two causes: first, they may 
have seen the blackboard rankly abused, as it 
sometimes is. The drawing of snakes, goblets, 
crowns and the like on the board is oftentimes 
more fanciful than it is useful. Sometimes the 
acrostic form is carried to an excess, and some- 
times the alliterative method of work is almost 
ridiculous. A second reason, however, may be 
found in the inertness of the average superinten- 
dent. It is so easy not to try a thing that is dif- 
ficult. The line of least resistance is the one most 
readily followed. Some superintendents, how- 
ever, seem to think they have no aptitude for 
blackboard work and natural modesty prevents 
them from trying to utilize this most potent agen- 
cy in the communication of truth. As a matter 
of fact, however, it is true that all secular teach- 
ers use the blackboard, if it be possible, because 

3* 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



they know the power that comes from appeal to 
eye-gate. What secular teachers have proved to 
be most useful, religious teachers certainly ought 
to adopt : and this is the ground of my plea for 
practise in the use of the blackboard. Here prac- 
tise does much. He who to-day will use the 
board in a most indifferent manner, a year from 
to-day, by virtue of practise, may use it in a most 
helpful way. My own experience was simple. 
I found that the board must be used for the best 
results. Then simple plans were made, and be- 
cause I write quite illegibly I took up printing 
as being more suited to my limited capacity. Be- 
cause of a tendency to print up-hill I used to go 
on Saturday to the Sunday-school room and prac- 
tise, putting on the board what was to be put 
there on the Sunday. This had to be done repeat- 
edly and wiped out and improved. Furthermore, 
because of fear still that in working in the pres- 
ence of the school with some rapidity, my work 
should still run up-hill and be uneven, I left on 
the board dotted guiding-lines invisible to the 
school but visible to myself, marking the top and 
the bottom of the letters that were to be used. In 
due time the guiding-lines were not needed and 
previous Saturday practise was not called for. If 
any choose to follow this example they will find 
the result to be the same, that by degrees they 
will gain facility in the manner of lettering 

32 



Blackboai'd Work 



and of putting whatever they have outlined on 
the board in such a way that the scholars shall 
not lift their eyebrows in surprise at the incom- 
petence of the teacher. There are two extremes 
to be avoided in blackboard work. One is the ar- 
tistic extreme, which leads scholars to wonder at 
the skill of the operator more than they do at 
the truth which he is trying to impart. This is a 
difficulty which few of us will encounter. The 
other extreme is the doing of the work in so 
bungling a way that the scholars will wonder at 
and despise the teacher. Here the middle road 
is the safest. That which goes on the board 
should not be so bad as to lead the scholars to de- 
spise, or so beautiful as to lead the scholars to ad- 
mire, the worker. The work should be so abso- 
lutely simple that the truth alone makes its im- 
pression on the mind of the spectator and the 
auditor. 

The kind of a board used is of a good deal of 
importance. It should be sufficiently large so 
that the work done can be seen by the whole 
school easily. It should have a silicated surface 
and not a glazed or painted surface. The chalk 
is a matter of some importance. In a small room 
you can use ordinary crayon chalk because your 
farthest spectator is but a few feet away. In a 
room where there are seated some hundreds, cray- 
on chalk is of no avail because they cannot see 

33 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



what is being done. Inch chalk, manufactured by 
the Providence Lithographic Company, is the 
only proper chalk for large audiences. It must 
be put on the board firmly so that it makes a 
clean-cut, wholesome impression. In smaller 
rooms, half-inch chalk is available. These chalks 
come in all colors. Color is an element of attrac- 
tiveness, though it should not be too often in- 
dulged in. But once in a while for the sake of 
emphasizing certain words or thoughts color 
serves a turn that nothing else will. The eraser 
is also a matter of importance. There are some 
erasers that are only smudgers. They diffuse the 
writing without obliterating it. Chamois skin is 
the best eraser. 

All these are matters of detail. But bear in 
mind that while trifles make perfection, perfection 
is no trifle, and he who does his work well must 
pay attention to the minute matters that go to 
make the work faultless. 

It is important that the blackboardist should 
be able to talk while the work is being put on the 
board. He who attacks eye-gate and ear-gate 
simultaneously, has the scholars' undivided 
attention. If, however, certain things are 
being put on the board in silence the school has a 
chance to get in some fine work of its own, es- 
pecially on the part of those scholars who are nat- 
urally inattentive. The blackboardist, therefore, 

34 



Blackboard Work 



should learn to keep on talking while actually 
putting thing? on the board. This involves a 
complete familiarity with what is to go on the 
board, so that swiftly and without additional 
thought the work goes on with the hand while at 
the same time the lips keep explaining what is 
being done. 

In this connection I may say that all that is 
being said now with regard to the use of the 
blackboard applies with equal force to the use of 
a block of paper in a smaller class where a black- 
board is not feasible. A quarto block with col- 
ored pencils for work to be done in the presence 
of a class of six or seven scholars appeals to their 
eyes just as imperatively as blackboard work ap- 
peals to the eyes of the school at large. This we 
say only as the result of prolonged experience. 
It is surprising to see how a restless, inattentive 
class focalizes its eyes on a block of paper on 
which the teacher is putting something in their 
presence. If in addition to this the wise teacher 
has furnished each scholar with a block of paper 
and a pencil, and has the scholar reproduce what 
he puts on his block, the attention of the class 
is absolutely riveted on the work done, because 
eye, ear and hand co-operate. There is then no 
chance for any vagrant straying of the thought 
of the scholar. 

If any one does not quite believe what has been 
35 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



said with regard to the efficacy of block and pen- 
cil work in the class let them make an honest ex- 
periment, and before they get very far they will 
find that it is a source of great power, and that the 
thoughts inculcated by the teacher find firm lodg- 
ment in the mind of the scholar because he has 
seen, heard and reproduced them on his block. 
Generally speaking, that is the best blackboard 
exercise which brings out the main facts of the 
lesson and also enforces its spiritual truth. These 
two things cannot always be done with one black- 
board exercise. However, patient toil will often 
accomplish what inertness cannot bring to pass. 
It is very well worth hard work to reach it. 

Let me give an illustration of this kind of 
blackboard work. Suppose the lesson that you 
are teaching is the trial of Jesus. It could be 
handled in this way. We know that we are 
studying about the central personage in the story 
whose name we now see. 



CHRIST 



The situation in which he found himself was 

36 



Blackboard Work 



not one of solitude, for he was in the presence 
of one who was a ruler; 



CHRIST 
BEFORE 



and the name of that ruler was Pilate ; 



CHRIST 
BEFORE 
PILATE 



and so we have the story in the three words, 
Christ before Pilate. On those three words you 
hang, therefore, all your narrative. Reversing 
these words which read from up down, read 
them from down up, and now they read, " Pilate 
before Christ/' That refers to a future day 
when all men shall stand before his judgment 
throne, and among them will be Pilate. For the 
day is coming when we must all stand before 
God's judgment seat. Wiping out now the word 

37 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

" Pilate," we substitute in its place the pronoun 
"you"; 



CHRIST 
BEFORE 
YOU 



That also is true to-day ; — " Behold I stand at 

the door and knock." 

Every time that God speaks to us through his 
Word or by the voice of the preacher, or that of 
the teacher, or by the silent voice of our con- 
sciences, it is really the Master who is knocking 
at the door of our hearts. Read that up — that 
will also be true one day — for then you will stand 
at His judgment seat. 

That is what I should call a good black- 
board, using only four words, but carrying the 
narrative in outline and making the personal 
application. 

Sometimes alliteration is allowable, provided 
always that the alliteration be based on fact and 
characterized by common sense. Alliteration 
helps the memory. For its own sake it never 
should be used, but for the sake of fastening 
truth it is often most helpful. Take the story 

38 



Blackboard Work 



of the Prodigal Son and see how that may be 
illustrated alliteratively and with diagram : 



Each R is the initial letter of the word in 
italics that follows. 

Before ever the boy left his father's house 
he was a rebellious boy, not subordinate to 
parental authority. He then takes a downward 
step and goes into a far country and becomes a 
riotous boy. Before long when there comes a 
great famine in the land, we find him a ruined 
boy. He did not stop there, however, but begins 
an ascending scale and we find him sitting in a 
field of swine, reflecting. Then he takes a still 
further step and we find him repenting — " I have 
sinned." There the narrative did not stop, but 
we find him returning, "and he arose and went." 
Coming back to his father's house we find him 
cordially received, his father's arms around him ; 
and then the last step is that in that house he is 
rejoiced over. That is not foolish alliteration, 
for it is true, and the alliteration merely serves 




39 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



to engrave the downward and the upward steps 
on the minds of the scholars. 

Take as another example a lesson on Nehemiah 
as worker- — and this can be drawn out as fol- 
lows : In this splendid man we find that there 
was a tremendous spirit of go. 



GO 



This spirit of go is what all young folk in our 
day have in abundance, and it is grand. But alas ! 
many start going and go wrong, but this man 
went right, which is a matter of great importance. 



GO 

RIGHT 



Not only did he go right, but he knew no such 
thing as rest, he kept going right on in spite of 
Sanballat, Tobiah, the Ammonites, the Ashdod- 

40 



Blackboard Work 



ites and the Arabians. This gives us the follow- 
ing: 



GO 

RIGHT 
ON 



This man went right on, however, at his work, so 
that we find him a model who is setting an exam- 
ple to us in our day, leading us to go right on 
working. 



GO 

RIGHT 
ON 

WORKING 



It made no difference to Nehemiah how hard 
the work was, nor how much self-sacrifice it 
called for. Day and night he was at it, so that 
for fifty-two days he never took off his clothes 
excepting only for washing. This was most 
exemplary. 

If now we wipe out everything but the initial 
4i 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



letters you find the result in the raising of the 
walls of Jerusalem — 



G 
R 
O 
W 



— for steadily they grew. 

Another type of blackboard work is also based 
on Nehemiah's story : Nehemiah was in Shushan 
the palace, and in Jerusalem there was great need. 
Put down the word " need " at the lower end of 
the board. 



NEED 



The need arose from the fact that the walls were 
down and the gates were burned with fire and the 
remnant left of the captivity were in destitution 
and deep despair. Nehemiah knew that some- 

42 



Blackboard Work 



where there existed great help, and his aim was 
to bring that divine help to minister to that need. 



HELP 



NEED 



If there is fire in the house there is great need. 
In the fire engine station there is great help, and 
the way that you summon the help to the need is 
by sounding the alarm: 





-/HELP 






need^S^ 





And between your house and the station there 
is a wire stretched. Nehemiah had an invisible 
wire between his great need and God's great help, 
and that invisible wire was prayer, Put down 
the word pray. 

"Then I prayed," he says, " to the God of 
Heaven." The application of this to modern 

43 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



times is very simple — great need, great help, com- 
munication through prayer, and the result, deliv- 
erance, victory. 

Take for example as another illustration of 
alliterative work the story of Pentecost. 

The first thing noticeable there was unquestion- 
ably the great miracle of the outpouring of the 
Holy Spirit. 



The tongues of fire rested on each one of the 
disciples. This miracle was to all onlookers, 
inside as well as outside, a great marvel. They 
all wondered when they heard them speak in 
their own tongues the wonderful works of God. 



Peter explains this meaning of the marvel of a 
miracle, which is our third point. He tells them 

44 



M 



IRACLE 



M 



IRACLE 
ARVEL 



Blackboard Work 



that this is that which was spoken of by the 
prophets, that their sons and their daughters 
should prophesy, and makes clear to them the 
significance of what had appealed to their eyes 
and their ears. 





K A 1 RACLE 




WUrvel 


1 


V EANINC 



Unfortunately many of those to whom he spoke 
at once began to mock and say "These men are 
full of new wine." 





IIRACLE 




ARVEL 


M 


EANING 




lOCK 



In a blackboard exercise of this sort, you set 
forth to the eye the actual occurrences of that 
most important event in the history of the 
church. Sometimes truth can be conveyed with- 
out any lettering on the board at all. Supposing 

45 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



that you are teaching from Ecclesiastes, — 
" Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy 
youth, before the evil days come and the years 
draw nigh, when thou shalt say I have no pleas- 
ure in them." Six or seven lines will set forth 
here the experience of mankind at large, — " The 
days of thy youth " — We come into the world 
prostrate in our mothers' arms and helpless. The 
years pass and we grow stronger and are more 
able to stand and manage ourselves. Presently 
comes full manhood when we stand alone. Still 
the years pass and multiply and old age comes 
on, when we begin to stoop and the grasshopper 
is a burden ; and at last man goes to his long 
home and as he came into the world helpless, so 



he goes out helpless. And is that all? No, be- 
cause the righteous has hope in his death and 
stands in the judgment justified. But when the 
wicked falls, he falls to rise no more. Seven 
lines and not a letter, but a tremendous truth 




46 



Blackboard J Fork 



so simple that a child can understand it, and yet 
so fundamental that every adult needs it. 

In using this diagram, let the teacher put 
down on blackboard, or on a block of paper 
in the class, each line as suggested. The left-hand 
horizontal line represents childhood; the next 
youth ; the next manhood ; the next old age, and 
the last death. The other two lines refer to the 
future of the righteous and of the wicked. 

A man came to me once in search of truth. He 
confessed to having lived a wrong life, but said 
that he hoped now to rectify matters by living 
more in accordance with his best ideals. He 
failed to understand the explanation given in the 
Word of the work of Jesus Christ in atoning for 
our past sins. A block of paper lying on the 
study table was then taken to illustrate that no 
amount of good living henceforth will atone for 



bad living heretofore. A straight line was 
drawn. I then said " Supposing your life up to 
a certain point had been absolutely straight; that 

47 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

then by reason of sin it broke down, and now we 
are here this evening with a broken life and you 




say that you propose henceforth to live straight ; 
does any amount of straightness before your 



sin rectify sin?" "No," he said. "Does any 
amount of straightness afterward remedy that 
crookedness ? " " No." " How can that crook- 
edness be remedied?" " I don't know," he said. 
Then we drew a straight line throughout, and 
erased the crooked line and said, " The blood 
of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin, and the 
perfect life of Christ is accepted for my broken 
life." When afterward he came to unite with 

48 



Blackboard Work 



the church, on being asked to tell his religious 
experience he said : " The first time that I saw 
how my sinful life could be remedied was when 
you took that piece of paper in your study and 
drew the crooked line, then wiped out the crook- 
edness and made it straight. Then," he said, " I 
saw." So it pleases God to take the simplest 
things and through them enforce fundamental 
spiritual truth. 

You remember the story of the man born 
blind. By means of a step diagram we can illus- 
trate the way in which the same truth affected 
different men. He and the Pharisees started 
from exactly the same truth, namely, that Jesus 




was a healer. 

(The letters on the diagram are the initials of 
the words in italics below.) 

They never denied that Jesus healed that 
man, and his only testimony at the start was, 
" Whereas I was blind, now I see." From that 
simple start he takes a step upward and says, 

49 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



" This man is a prophet!' Later on he takes 
another step upward and arrives at the conclusion 
that this man is the Son of God; and immediately 
he goes up one step farther, to the highest point, 
and falls at his feet and zuorships him. On the 
other hand, the Pharisees, starting from the same 
point, promptly go down a step and they say, 
" Give God the glory ; this man is a sinner." They 
then promptly go down a step farther and charge 
this man with being possessed of a demon — 
" Thou hast a devil." Then they plunge down to 
the bottom of the declivity and say, "Kill him." 
The same starting-point with different attitude to 
the truth leads one man to worship and the other 
man to murder. There you have an illustration 
of how so simple a device as an ascending and 
descending set of steps illustrate the rising or 
the falling in spiritual life. 

If I have made the matter of blackboard work 
at all clear to you, you have realized that all that 
I have done has been condensed to the last degree 
of simplicity. Nothing has gone on the board 
that has taxed your thought or your memory, or 
perplexed you by its complexity. A child could 
understand all that has been used. Here is one 
of the great difficulties in work of this kind (as 
I can bear witness), that more labor has to be 
put on this final crystallization and condensation 
and clarification of the thought than on all the rest 

5° 



Blackboard Work 



of the lesson put together. What I have been 
saying with regard to condensation, clarification, 
and crystallization applies to all sermons and to 
all prayer-meeting talks and to all Christian En- 
deavor addresses, and to every public address 
that you will ever be called upon to deliver. 
Here, then, labor and toil and practise and study, 
until through study and practise you become a 
workman who needeth not to be ashamed. 



5i 



IV 



HAND-WORK IN TEACHING 

By the Rev. M. S. Littlefield 

Of the many pathways to the brain that are 
traversed by motor activities the form of occu- 
pation or hand-work is the most direct. The en- 
trance to the brain by way of the finger tips is 
a swinging door, it opens both ways, inward 
and outward. Hand-work is at once an ally and 
a test of knowledge. It is a method of impress- 
ing and of expressing the lesson facts. Whether 
it be a fact of history or a geometrical problem 
or a line of argument or anything whatsoever, 
unless the finger tips can express it, the brain has 
not grasped it clearly. Conversely, set the hand 
to the task of stating it, and the truth at once and 
clearly impresses itself upon the brain. In the 
earliest schooldays the truth is evoked and im- 
pressed, and expressed, too, through occupation 
work, and the implements are blocks of wood, 
colored paper, raffia. It is not otherwise in the 
latest days of study. Truth has broadened and 

52 



Hand-work in Teaching 



deepened, the implements have changed ; they 
are microscopes, test tubes, crucibles, now, but 
the principles which underlie their use remain un- 
changed through all the years and subjects and 
methods of study. From kindergarten to labora- 
tory we learn through expressive activities, and 
the chief of these activities is hand-work. 

In any teaching process the instructor is con- 
cerned mainly with three things, the lesson, the 
lesson material, and the lesson agencies. The les- 
son is the truth or the principle of life to be made 
known, and its embodiment in life is the end 
sought. The lesson material is found in the 
facts of the outer world, real or imaginary ; an 
event, or a story, or an argument, which illus- 
trate or reveal the lesson truth. The lesson 
agencies are the mental powers of the pupil and 
the teacher working in co-operation. 

If the end of the teaching process is to arouse 
a moral impulse, to reproduce in life the princi- 
ples expressed in the lesson material, the begin- 
ning of the process is to aid the scholar to see and 
to interpret the facts. Obviously, the impulse 
is based upon facts which are clearly seen and 
upon truths which are deeply felt, and to make 
real and clear the lesson material is the purpose 
and justification of the various forms of self- 
activity. The prayer of a teacher of Israel in 
behalf of his perplexed and terrified servant 

53 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



outlines the immediate end of all teachers, " Open 
thou his eyes that he may see." 

The teaching process involves co-operation be- 
tween teacher and pupil. Patterson DuBois de- 
fines teaching as " enabling another to restate 
the truth in the terms of his own life." The 
teacher's work can never be a substitute for the 
scholar's work, for knowledge is gained, not im- 
parted. The first problem, therefore, of the in- 
structor is to arouse the pupil to take some active 
part in every lesson. Hand-work here is his 
most efficient ally. By the various forms of activ- 
ity in class and home work the interests are 
quickened, the will is stimulated and the faculties 
are focused. Hand-work gives an objective by 
setting before the scholar a definite task. It gives 
unity to his work, and, when rightly carried out, 
it conserves the spiritual aim by making real the 
events out of which the moral impulse is derived. 

There are three main lines of activities which 
apply to Sunday-school instruction, geography 
work, illustrative work, and written work. As 
corollaries to these types decorative and construc- 
tive work may be added. Their value is indirect, 
but none the less real for that. They will beautify 
the completed product, and will spur the scholar 
to do other and more important work. The lines 
of work are here given in their logical order, pro- 
ceeding from the general and introductory to the 

54 



Hand-work in Teaching 



specific aspects of the subject. The chronological 
order, or the approach from the standpoint of 
the age of the scholar, is quite different. Speaking 
broadly, illustrative work applies to the earlier 
ages, geography work to the older ages, and writ- 
ten work is the norm and the basis for all ages 
beyond the primary. At first the hand-work is 
limited to the illustrative forms, drawing and 
picture work. When the child can write, titles 
and texts can be copied, and later still narratives 
of the lesson can be written. Geography and his- 
tory appear together about the tenth year, when 
the study of events in their relationship gradually 
takes the place of the concrete and topical story 
work of the primary ages. As the child ap- 
proaches the high-school years the writing of the 
lesson story will merge into the developing of his- 
torical outlines with compositions on the charac- 
ters or the periods studied. Geography work 
in connection with the history will enrich and in- 
tensify the hand- work throughout the course. The 
most advanced lines of work are history and lit- 
erature note-book work and thesis work. And 
so the activities differ and deepen as knowledge 
and experience widen. 

Approaching the subject from the standpoint 
of the different types of work, they may be stud- 
ied somewhat in detail. Geography is prepara- 
tory and introductory, and gives the background 

55 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

of any event or series of events which we call a 
period. Illustrative work makes clear the details 
of any specific event or story. Written work 
in the forms of narratives, composition or note- 
book work records and interprets the events. 

I. Geography Work. Knowledge of the geog- 
raphy is essential to an understanding of the his- 
tory. Back of the message of the Bible are the 
men of the Bible whose story the message inter- 
prets, and back of the men of the Bible is the 
land whose position and form helped to deter- 
mine the story. A proper study of Bible geogra- 
phy will demand the making of three kinds of 
maps, physical, political, and event maps. 

Physical maps locate events in place and give 
their geographical setting. Palestine is as distinct 
among the lands as were the Hebrews among the 
nations. The physical characteristics of the land 
are both striking and of profound significance. It 
lay as a narrow strip between the desert and the 
sea, a connecting link between the civilizations 
of the Nile and the Euphrates. The strip itself 
is broken into four distinct zones extending north 
and south. Going inland from the sea, we cross 
the coast plain, rich and fertile, which in Old 
Testament times was the highway and the battle- 
field of all nations. Rising from the plain along 
its entire length, broken only by the Plain of 
Esdraelon beyond Carmel, and approached by 

56 



Hand-work in Teaching 



foothills, is the Central Range. Beyond that is 
the deep Jordan Valley. Beyond the valley the 
Eastern Plateau stretches off to the desert. The 
people who lived upon the Central Range were 
thus, by the great paradox of history, in contact 
with all the known world, yet severed from it. 
Isolated by their hills and by the barrier of the 
Jordan Valley on the east, they were challenged 
and imperiled by the civilizations which touched 
them on the west. 

Physical features may be shown in two ways : 
by map modeling in sand or plasticine, and by 
color work upon a contour map. 

In the class sessions the work should be done 
either in sand or with color work. A sand table 
is invaluable in historical studies. The 
area is large enough to permit several 
to work at once, the material is clean, 
and corrections can be made instantly. The 
material should be white builders 5 sand. 
Moulders' sand or any sand with clay in it should 
be avoided. The best dimensions for a sand table 
are in the proportion of three to four, specifically 
27 by 36 inches. This proportion will be found 
exactly right for the modeling of the maps of 
the Old Testament world, Sinai and Egypt, Pal- 
estine, the Plain of Esdraelon, and Jerusalem. 
Any tray so made that it will not warp or leak 
will answer. It can be set on horses or a table. 

57 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



It need not be zinc-lined. It should be made 
of narrow flooring, tongued and grooved, with 
a rim about five inches deep. The bottom should 
be painted blue to represent water when the 
sand is brushed away. 

The physical geography will at once give the 
background and make clear the details of many 
of the Bible stories. The events will become very 
real when the scholars mould the hills and the 
plains which were the theater of events, and trace 
the roads along which caravans and armies, the 
Old Testament heroes, Jesus and his friends, 
journeyed. With the aid of stereographs and 
photographs the places can be seen just as they 
appear to-day. 

In addition to relief work, color work on con- 
tour maps can be done to show physical features. 
Two series are available, the Bailey and the 
Hodge maps. The space between contour lines 
is filled in with crayons according to a consistent 
color scheme. This work will supplement work 
upon the sand table. The advantage of the sur- 
face maps is that they can be mounted in note- 
books. 

Political maps will give the broad historical 
situation at any given period. The scholar col- 
ors in political boundaries and so learns the rela- 
tion of the nations to each other. A series of 
such maps will show the sweep of history by ex- 

58 



Hand- work in Teaching 



hibitiug the successive political changes. The 
writer has prepared a series of fifteen maps cov- 
ering the Old Testament history from the Exodus 
to the Return, outlined for color work by the in- 
dividual scholars. 

Event maps locate events in time as well as 
place, and show them in their relationship and 
sequence. To plax:e events in their order upon a 
map will appeal at once to the imagination and 
the memory. The story of the Exodus, the life 
of David, the ministry of Elijah, the journeys of 
Jesus or the Apostles, for example, could all be 
placed upon a series of maps. This will picture 
the history to the scholar in the most vivid pos- 
sible way. The journeys and incidents will be 
developed and recorded as the lessons proceed. 
These maps when completed will be placed in 
the note-books and will be the basis and the illus- 
tration of the narrative work. 

Tc give a single illustration, take the story of 
Passion week. The story will unfold vividly as 
the journeys taken by Jesus during the week are 
traced upon a map. The map of Jerusalem and 
its environs may be modeled in sand or outlined 
upon a blackboard or upon a class outline map. 
The events of the week will be developed from 
the biblical record, and will be marked in the 
form of journeys on the large map, and be repro- 
duced upon the scholars' maps. 

59 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



On the first day of the week Jesus went from 
the home of his friends in Bethany to the Tem- 
ple. As he came in sight of the city the hosannas 
of the crowd formed an antiphon to the tears 
of Jesus as he mourned over the blindness and the 
doom of his people. That night he returned to 
Bethany. On the two following days the same 
journey was made., from Bethany to the Temple 
and return. On these days the final words of 
his public ministry were spoken, the final con- 
tests with the rulers took place, and the veil was 
for a moment lifted before some aspects of the 
life of the days to come. Wednesday was spent 
in quietness. On Thursday Jesus journeyed over 
the same road and went to the southern part of 
the city to the home of the unnamed follower 
who gave to him and his friends a place for the 
final words and the bequest of his mission and 
his peace. From the home of his friend — John 
Mark, was it? — Jesus went out across the Kedron 
valley to Gethsemane. where the victory was 
won which made Calvary possible and where he 
received the traitor's kiss. Then he was taken 
back to the city to the high priest's house. In 
the early morning he was taken to the Sanhedrin 
where the death sentence was pronounced. Un- 
able to carry out their sentence, the Jews took 
Jesus to the palace of Pilate. Seeking to escape 
the responsibility of passing judgment. Pilate 

60 



Hand-work in Teaching 



sent Jesus to Herod. But back again he came, 
thorn-crowned, to Pilate, who was forced at last 
to a decision, and who sent Jesus on his final 
journey through the Via Sacra to the hill 

"Without a city wall, 
Where the dear Lord was crucified, 
Who died to save us all." 

These journeys could be traced as the events 
are reached in the course of the lessons, or they 
could be traced at one time as a review or a pre- 
view of the period. In the same way any histori- 
cal subject could be treated. 

II. Illustrative Work. This is properly picture 
work, and consists in portraying the details of 
any story or in expressing something of its mean- 
ing. For example, a model of the Temple could 
be shown and handled in studying the stories of 
Passion week, or by symbolic drawings the mean- 
ing of some one of the incidents could be ex- 
pressed. I have before me the double page of a 
scholar's note-book which portrays the opening 
scene in the upper room. On one page a picture 
of an Oriental house is mounted, showing the 
position of an upper room. On the opposite page 
appears a drawing of a tabouret on which a 
pitcher and basin rest, and the words, printed, 
" By love serve one another. " It looks very 
modern, but the scholar has caught and expressed 
the symbolism clearly. 

61 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



This particular work was done by an older 
scholar. Drawing work applies specially to young- 
est ages and frequently is the best possible way 
of expressing the story told by the teacher. A 
child's drawing is very crude, but he sees the pic- 
ture his imagination and not his pencil draws, 
and this mode of expression is marked by a unity 
his spoken word does not possess. 

Sand modeling is allied to drawing. Some 
stories and scenes lend themselves well to sand 
picturing, for this is simply making a picture 
in three dimensions. For instance, a house may 
be modeled in the sand to give vividness to the 
story of the healing of the man let down through 
the roof. Drawing, picture pasting, and model- 
ing are the forms of work in this group adapted 
to Sunday-school instruction. 

III. Written Work. This work will begin 
when the child can write, and will continue as 
the normal type in connection with the other 
forms throughout the course. It will advance 
fi om the simplest beginnings in scrap-book work 
through narrative work to historical note-book 
and composition work in the older grades. 

Scrap-book work is the constructing of a port- 
folio of stories with picture pasting, drawing, and 
color work as the lessons are taught. Writing 
the titles of the pictures and verses expressing 
the lesson truth will be the earliest w T ork. Later, 

62 



Hand-work in Teaching 



a brief story of the lesson illustrated by pictures 
can be written after the teaching of the lesson, 
as home work. 

It is always advisable to break the work into 
small sections to enable the scholar to produce 
completed products at frequent intervals. Any 
literary unit should be treated separately in nar- 
rative work; the story of a life — Elijah, Ruth, 
Joseph — or even a briefer subject, such as the 
story of the sower, which may be illustrated eas- 
ily. The story would be written in one or more 
chapters and would be bound in a cover designed 
and illumined by the scholar. 

As the scholars approach the high school ages 
narrative work will gradually give place to his- 
torical note-book work. The note-books will be 
a syllabus of the history. Narrative work will 
be included, but not for the purpose of reproduc- 
ing the lesson story. It will take the form of a 
summary of the events of a period or an appre- 
ciation of a character. This is really composi- 
tion, and should not be called for too frequently. 
The regular work would be the building up of a 
syllabus or an analysis of the events in connec- 
tion w r ith map work. The method is to develop 
the outline from the Bible or the text-book step 
by step, and to mark the map and record the 
facts. The tracing of the journeys and the mark- 
ing of the map would be done in the class, as this 

63 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

is a method of presenting the lesson facts and is, 
therefore, inseparable from the lesson. The writ- 
ing of notes as the lesson proceeds is also in the 
nature of the case part of the class work. But 
all else is home work. The general rule is that 
geography work and whatever may have to do 
with the mastery of the lesson facts belongs to the 
lesson period and should accompany the discus- 
sion of the lesson facts. Putting the lesson in 
permanent form, the completion of the note-book 
with decorative work, and all narrative or com- 
position work will be done at home. 

Here also it is better to divide the work into 
sections and make each book cover a limited 
period. In this way the interest will be deepened 
through diversity. 

A description of one or two typical note-books 
will illustrate the principles. 

A scholar's book on the period of the Exodus 
contains the following features on successive 
pages. A title-page lettered in color; a table of 
contents with an illumined heading; a fertility 
map of Sinai and Palestine colored to show the 
desert and arable regions ; a physical map of Pal- 
estine colored to show elevations; a hymn of 
Hebrew origins, Deuteronomy 32 : 7-12, cut from 
an old Bible and pasted on the page, with an 
illumined heading; an event map of the Exodus, 
the journey being marked in red on a map colored 

64 



Hnnd-work in Teaching 



to show broadly the national areas of the peoples 
of Canaan, the whole expressing to the eye that 
the journey was a conquest; a hymn of the cross- 
ing, Exodus 15, cut out and pasted with a de- 
signed heading; a written summary of the events 
to explain the event numbers on the map ; a hymn 
of the journey of life, " Guide me, O thou great 
Jehovah," written with illuminated initial let- 
ters and illustrated with pictures. Pictures se- 
lected by the scholar are mounted on the pages 
opposite the maps and written work throughout. 

A book covering the life of Christ follows the 
same general method. Designed and decorated 
title and contents pages begin the work. Eleva- 
tion maps of Palestine and of Esdraelon follow. 
A page is given to prophecies concerning Jesus. 
The scholar has selected and copied two or three 
that he likes best. A brief narrative of the prep- 
aration for the coming of Jesus through Roman 
domination condensed from the text-book fol- 
lows. The body of the book is made by making 
nine journey maps corresponding to the nine gen- 
erally accepted periods of Christ's life. Each of 
these map pages is followed by three pages, on 
one of which is written an outline of the events, 
another giving a brief narrative of the general 
characteristics of the period copied from the text- 
book, and another of quotations from the words 
of Jesus spoken during the period, the scholar 

65 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

selecting the sayings which appeal to him 
most. 

IV. Decorative and Constructive Work. Dec- 
orative work consists in beautifying the completed 
product. This will be done by designing covers, 
title-pages, and tables of contents, by original 
drawings, and by illuminating borders and initial 
letters in color. This will give to the scholar an 
impetus and to his written work character. A 
bit of color work like the designing of a title-page, 
which requires thought, will go far toward secur- 
ing the completion of the book and will set an 
esthetic standard by which the rest of the work 
will be measured. Faithfulness, order, regular- 
ity and ambition will be incited by beginning a 
piece of work on a high level. 

In the early ages of the Intermediate depart- 
ment the boys are interested in many kinds of 
constructive work. This instinct can be turned 
into educational and altruistic lines of work. A 
special but valuable form of activity is the mak- 
ing of models to symbolize a story or an incident. 
The work will be of educational value, for their 
handicraft will remind them of the lessons they 
have learned. A sword will speak of Gideon, a 
sling of David, a tent, a house, a well, a sheep- 
fold, will all suggest many Bible stories. The 
scholars can present with the objects a written 
statement of the events connected with them 

66 



Hand-work in Teaching 



which have been the subjects of their studies. 
This work is optional, but will provide entertain- 
ment for classes of the younger ages when they 
meet socially. Any work of special merit can be 
placed in the school museum as part of a perma- 
nent exhibit. 

Hand-work must be interesting enough to lure 
without dominating, hard enough to challenge 
without dispiriting, easy enough to be done read- 
ily while appealing to the scholar as real work. 
Hand-work is only a means to a higher end and 
must never eclipse that end. It is not a device 
for keeping restless scholars busy. A £ame would 
do that better. It is a method of directing his en- 
ergies along the line of cultural activities whose 
end is character. The purpose of the Sunday- 
school is not to make a map, but a boy. That it 
leads to and makes the more distinct the spiritual 
emphasis in instruction is its sole purpose and 
justification. 

This subject is treated fully with suggestions 
for work, historical maps and directions for se- 
curing supplies, in " Hand-work in the Sunday- 
school/' published by The Sunday School Times 
Company. 



67 



V 



THE TEACHER'S WORK OUTSIDE OF 
SCHOOL 

Let us now consider the teacher's work out- 
side of the school. There are 168 hours in the 
week. Inside of the school, the teacher is with his 
class at the outside an hour and a half. There 
remain, then, at least 166 hours, during a part of 
which the teacher ought to be able to be in contact 
with the scholar. That teacher who from Sunday 
to Sunday does nothing for the class misses splen- 
did opportunities. Of course, an important thing 
the teacher should think of is the example set to 
the scholar. The teacher's life is everything in his 
work, for the scholar thinks during the week 
much more frequently of his teacher than many 
realize. Many times in the week the teacher is 
present in the scholar's mind : of course, the 
scholar has formed some opinion of the teacher, 
complimentary or otherwise, and every time the 
scholar thinks of the teacher a personal influence 
is exercised by that very memory. 

"Public life for God must be preceded by pri- 
68 



Outside of School 



vate life with God. Unless God has first spoken to 
a man it is vain for a man to speak for God." 

This is true in the life of the teacher, and all 
work inside of the school or outside is vitiated if 
the life of the teacher be not in accordance with 
God's Word. 

In speaking of work outside of the school, of 
course the question of visitation of our scholars 
comes to the front immediately. No teacher does 
proper work who does not know his scholars in 
their homes. Many a time a single visit to the 
home of the scholar will throw a flood of light on 
problems which have perplexed the teacher up to 
that point. 

A superintendent, going into a home where 
there was a very nervous young woman, found 
there that her father was occasionally given to 
drink, and when he was in his cups he would 
have exhausted the patience of Job, with his irri- 
tating language. That, this young woman had to 
stand, and it reflected itself in her deportment and 
her attitude in Sunday-school. Knowing through 
visitation the difficulty under which the scholar 
labored, it was more easy to have patience with 
the girl, realizing that in her home she was tried 
to the breaking-point. Nothing but a visit in the 
home could have thrown light on the difficulties 
under which she was laboring. The same super- 
intendent, visiting in another home, found the 

69 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

father exceedingly surly. He turned his back on 
the visitor promptly, and never opened his lips 
from the beginning of the visit until the end. It 
was the day after Christmas; and the mother, 
following the superintendent into the hallway, 
said, "The children are broken-hearted. This 
morning their father, in a fit of anger, put all the 
toys they got yesterday from the Sunday-school 
into the stove. " 

There was a revelation of family life, causing 
one to sympathize with the little children in their 
bitter wo in having such a father. 

Nothing, therefore, will take the place of visit- 
ing in the home, and that, especially, in the case of 
scholars who are peculiarly trying. The boy who 
has tested your patience to the breaking-point in 
the class will be less apt to do so again, if he has 
had the privilege of being your host in his home ; 
he hasn't the nerve to behave the following Sun- 
day in the same atrocious way in which he be- 
haved last week. Some one has said, "Who- 
ever puts his hand on the scholar's head puts his 
hand on the mother's heart," and that is a hard- 
hearted mother or father who will not in some 
measure, at least, respond to the call of friend- 
ship. 

The teacher should, if possible, know the schol- 
ars in their places of business. You may say this 
is impossible. So it is sometimes. But very fre- 

70 



Outside of School 



quently it is possible and most feasible. Of course, 
the wise teacher going to the department store 
where he has a scholar will not prolong his visit, 
and if the scholar be behind the counter and busy, 
the teacher will stay only a moment. Yet even 
under such conditions is it possible to do a good 
deal. I know a teacher, one of whose scholars 
was at the soda water counter in Huyler s, where 
sometimes the ladies stand three deep awaiting 
their turn. Of course the girl was exceptionally 
busy. The teacher going in one day and seeing the 
situation, simply said, "Mary, I just came to say 
'how do you do' ; here is a rose,'' and she passed 
the rose to her over the shoulders of the ladies. 
Do you not believe that Mary would be very apt 
to be in the class on the following Sunday because 
of that visit, brief though it was? Little things 
tell. Heartstrings pull. 

It was my privilege once to be at the funeral 
of a noted Bible-class teacher. Ninety-six young 
men stood around the coffin, all members of his 
class. He knew them all in their homes and in 
their places of business. Thus he won them to 
himself, and through himself to the Master for 
whom he stood. 

There are times when a visit in the place of 
business will reveal important things to the 
teacher. In one of the Sunday-schools in this 
town there was a very beautiful young woman 

7i 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



who stood behind the lace counter of one of our 
great department stores. Visiting her there you 
could easily see the dangers to which she was ex- 
posed. She told her superintendent, "Men come 
to my counter to buy lace for their wives, and 
then they buy an exceptionally fine piece of lace, 
and say, "Won't you accept this from me ?" Or, 
they say, "Saturday afternoon is free with you; I 
have a beautiful span of horses; could I call for 
you for a drive?" Of course, the meaning of all 
that is patent to any one who knows city life and 
human nature. When the teacher comes thus into 
sympathy with the scholar in home and business, 
knowing them in both places, he will be far more 
ready to minister to the scholar's necessities, to 
sympathize in the sorrows and strengthen in the 
temptations to which the scholar is exposed. 

A young woman in this town is engaged in the 
theatrical business. Such scenes go on behind the 
stage that, outraged, she appealed to the manager 
of the theater for protection. He laughed in her 
face and said, "You had better go to a nunnery." 
That is all she got there. If a teacher knows these 
things and can strike in at the right moment, a 
life may be saved for time and a ^oul may be 
saved for eternity. 

A teacher visiting in the home of a very poor 
child, asked the mother whether she taught her 
children how to pray. The response was, "Why, 

72 



Outside of School 



certainly.'' "Mary," she said to her little five-year- 
old child, "kneel down and say your prayers." 
At once the little five-year-old knelt down, and 
this is what she said: "Oh, Thou with the 
strength of an earthly father, and more than the 
tenderness of an earthly mother, look down upon 
us, thy creatures, we beseech thee, and vouchsafe 
unto us thy benediction and grace, for Christ's 
sake. Amen." 

What a revelation was that. The little child 
was being taught to use such words as "vouch- 
safe," "benediction" and "grace," words that were 
not in the vocabulary of the child, and therefore 
conveyed no meaning to her mind. Here, then, 
was an opportunity to instruct the mother for the 
sake of the child. 

In home visitation there are times of especial 
importance, when, for example, sickness comes 
into the home. Many a hard heart and many a 
callous conscience is softened when, in dire physi- 
cal need, the teacher comes, bringing, perhaps, a 
little bouquet of flowers, or, if the family be poor, 
some little delicacy for the sickroom of the 
scholar. Thus great ends are accomplished, be- 
cause then the heart is softened and responds 
as it never will respond in the buoyancy of health. 
Many a scholar has been won by ministration at 
a time like that and many a mother's heart has 
been turned toward Sunday-school and church 

73 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

through the Christian life that such opportunities 
have made manifest. You can easily see, then, 
what power there is in visitation. It reflects itself 
in all the classwork, and scholars become more 
attentive, while unruly ones behave themselves 
better and incline to the teacher more kindly than 
if they never saw the teacher from one week's 
end to the other. 

Birthdays are another gracious opportunity for 
service. Every teacher should have the birthdays 
of all her scholars and should never fail to send 
them a birthday message of some kind on each 
anniversary. It should always be sent under a 
two-cent stamp and never as a postal card, for 
postal cards are public property, but the letter 
under the two-cent stamp is private. Of course, 
this calls for watchfulness. I know a teacher 
who, wherever she was in the world, figured the 
mails so accurately that the birthday letter for 
the members of her class in New York should 
reach them before their birthday, and this she did 
when she was a thousand miles up the Nile. This 
required great care with regard to the steamer 
sailing, and, indeed, so minute was this watch- 
fulness that this teacher figured whether the 
steamer was a five-day steamer or a seven-day 
steamer, so as to be sure to reach her scholars 
in time. Thoughtfulness like that assures grati- 
tude in the heart of the scholars, and will show 

74 



Outside of School 



ithem their teacher remembers their anniversary, 
though she is 8000 miles away. 

Vacation letters are most helpful. Scholars are 
apt to think, "Out of sight, out of mind. Teacher 
has gone to the mountains, or to the seashore, and 
has left us in New York, stewing with heat, and 
never gives us a thought." If the teacher will 
remember to send from time to time to her 
scholars a letter of greeting, telling of her experi- 
ences, enclosing some little memento, a crimson 
maple leaf, some ferns, a few pressed flowers, 
that cost nothing, she will find that it has a won- 
derful effect in the class. 

The teacher should be acquainted with the kind 
of company that his scholars keep. It is a matter 
of very great importance to know whether my 
boy during the week is associating with a corner 
gang, for it may explain much of the difficulty 
that I have with the class on Sunday. It is a 
matter of great importance to know whether my 
girl has pure associates in business or pleasure 
during the week. 

A girl came to her superintendent one time 
and said, "The language at our bench in the shop 
is fierce, and if I sometimes remonstrate when 
some peculiarly foul story is told by the girls, 
they say, 'Hey, you are too good to live ; better 
go back to your Sunday-school/ " 

The teacher who knows the companionship, 
75 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

either voluntary or necessary, of his scholars, will, 
of course, know better how to meet the difficulties 
under which the scholar labors. 

It is important also to know what the amuse- 
ments are that our scholars indulge in. In a great 
city the problem is difficult and the outlook often- 
times ominous. A friend of mine was in one of 
these penny-in-the-slot shows in this town and 
saw two girls looking at a moving picture. As 
they went away he heard one say to the other, 
"How would you like to be she?" This led him to 
put a penny in the slot, and what he saw I cannot 
repeat, but indescribable damage was done to 
those tw 7 o girls by that one sight. 

Yes, I must know where my scholars seek their 
amusements ; what there is going on in the town 
that may besmirch them, befoul their imagina- 
tion, excite all that is low and base in their lives 
and possibly obliterate what I have given of good 
teaching. 

The teacher should be informed as to what the 
scholar reads. There comes a time in the life of 
every mentally active young person when reading 
is his great joy. But what the scholar reads 
makes a vast difference. You can stimulate along 
right lines and you can prevent the scholar pur- 
suing wrong lines of reading only if you know 
what they are doing. But if the scholar is rushing 
along some vile line of reading on six days of the 

76 



Outside of School 



week, your teaching has but little effect on your 
scholar's mind and still less on his heart on Sun- 
day. 

Of course, this all means that the teacher's 
office is no sinecure. When you take the position 
of spiritual leader for ten boys, you perhaps being 
the only spiritual leader those boys have, you have 
assumed a tremendous responsibility, and every 
ounce of power that you possess and every spare 
moment almost that you have should be devoted 
to this high and noble calling. 

Now, at this point some one may say, "I have 
no time for this kind of work." Pause a moment 
and ask yourself honestly, "Haven't I?" How 
much time does it take to visit round a class of 
ten? If you will quietly work it out and then 
utilize the time you have, nine times out of ten 
you will find that all that has been referred to 
above can be accomplished. Only there must be 
no wasting of time, no preferring of the Saturday 
afternoon matinee to the visitation of your class, 
no frittering away of opportunity. They who are 
the busiest accomplish most, and it is to the 
busiest people we go when we want a little more. 
Lazy people are always so awfully busy that they 
cannot do what they have in hand, much less 
anything more. 

It has been the experience of the writer that 
if you will systematize your time and hold yourself 

77 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



rigidly to your schedule there is time enough for 
anything that God wants you to do. If only our 
hearts are thoroughly interested in our work and 
our heads direct our hearts, there is no question 
but that the work will be accomplished and we 
shall live up to the great responsibility that God 
has laid upon us. 

In the teacher's work outside of the school 
attendance at divine services on Sunday and 
week-day is important. Your scholars will follow 
your example more than your precept. Your walk 
tells more than your talk. (Here comes one 
of the serious difficulties of those Sunday-school 
teachers who belong to another church and work 
in the mission church. They do not worship in 
the mission church, and therefore their scholars 
never see them between Sunday-school sessions 
inside of the house of God. That may be neces- 
sary, but it is most unfortunate.) The teacher 
can on Sunday say to a scholar, "Mary, will you 
be at the young people's meeting this week? I 
shall be there. " Mary is twice as apt to come to 
the meeting if she believes the teacher will be 
there. 

It may be to the great advantage of teacher and 
scholar if the teacher can invite the class to her 
own home. Not all teachers are so situated, I 
know, but where it is possible it is most desirable, 
for that is an almost unheard-of scholar, who, 

78 



Outside of School 



after eating some gingerbread and drinking some 
lemonade in your home, will miss attending your 
class for at least two weeks. 

These meetings of scholars with the teachers in 
the teacher's home are grand opportunities to 
teach the scholars civil deportment, to show to the 
scholar if he come from the slums the meaning 
of Christian home life. A hundred things will 
talk to that scholar in the Christian home beside 
the voice of the teacher. Such class sociables need 
not be at all costly, for lemonade and cake or 
apples or oranges are adequate for the com- 
missariat department. But in some way, by hook 
or by crook, the teacher must put the arm of 
affection around the class to win them. Then 
there grows between the teacher and scholar a 
familiarity and mutual trustfulness that is some- 
thing most beautiful to behold. In efforts like this 
the teacher can really, with added divine grace, 
transform the life of the scholar. 

If I have made myself clear you will see that 
the teacher's opportunity stretches through the 
whole week, and thus the teacher remains teacher 
from Sunday to Sunday and the scholar feels his 
influence, hallowed, stimulating and strengthening 
for nearly every day in the week. 



79 



VI 



CONVERSION AND CULTURE OF THE 
SCHOLAR 

As the teachers face a class of primary scholars, 
what is there in front of them? Are these the 
lambs of the flock or not? In a Sunday-school 
convention a gentleman said, " Call them not 
lambs but wolves." Which are they? Certain it 
is that out of these primary classes are coming 
in future years multitudes of drunkards, adulter- 
ers, thieves, murderers. Certain it also is that 
out of these same classes are coming Sunday- 
school teachers, preachers, missionaries, martyrs. 
Such facts give us pause as we face these chil- 
dren. The truth is that they are neither wolves 
nor lambs. They are potential wolves and poten- 
tial lambs. We need thoroughly to understand 
this, as we minister to them, because if we fail 
to understand the facts of nature as they confront 
us we shall fail to reach rightly those to whom 
we are sent. A celebrated clergyman said in my 
hearing in debate, " There are no heathen chil- 
dren/' to which my response is, " If there are 

80 



Conversion and Culture 

no heathen children you manage to bring up a 
pretty good crop of adult heathen out of non- 
heathen children." The fact is that they are 
neither Christian children nor heathen children 
until something has been wrought in them. Chil- 
dren are not naturally Christ-like. If you think 
they are naturally Christ-like, would you like to 
try this experiment : take fifty babies and bring 
them up in a baby- fold, allowing them adequate 
physical care but no moral culture ; let them 
develop the natural bent of their own natures. 
What will be the result ? Would you find there as 
they grow from three to six years of age a sweet, 
self-sacrificing community of Christ-like disposi- 
tion? Would there not be there some selfish, 
snatching children, some violent, overbearing chil- 
dren ; some with quick temper ? Would there 
not be some who swiftly w r ould develop untruth- 
fulness and dishonesty in the matter of their play- 
things ? It is all very well to talk poetically about 
the beauty of child life, but child life left abso- 
lutely to itself will develop substantially as child 
life now develops. We therefore say that chil- 
dren have inherited natures that have a bent 
toward evil, and must be cared for, and our aim 
with these children must be twofold : first, to bring 
them by divine grace into sweet subjection to 
Jesus as Saviour and Master ; and second, to 
nurture them in the Christian life, so that they 

81 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



may grow in every grace and in the knowledge 
of Jesus Christ and in likeness to him. Much of 
our modern paidology. however, seems to go on 
the basis that a child need not be converted ; that 
it is sufficient if you evolve that which is good 
in the child and repress that which is evil. We 
hold, on the contrary, to the truth of the Mas- 
ter's statement, " Ye must be born again." 

As soon as a child consciously does wrong, so 
soon a child must consciously repent. As soon as 
a child consciously understands that it is alien- 
ated from the divine will, so soon must the child 
understand how it may be reconciled with the 
divine will. This is not to say that children be- 
fore they recognize right and wrong are not really 
saved if they pass away, for we believe thorough- 
ly that they are ; but we also believe that when 
consciously they have done wrong, consciously 
they must repent. Of course, we would not 
transplant the experiences of the adult and force 
them upon the child. A child sinning must be a 
child repentant, and both are child experiences. 
We must not expect in a child that poignant sense 
of sin that we sometimes find in adults, though 
it is only fair to say right here that sometimes you 
find among children deeper penitence than you 
find among adults. We believe, then, that a 
child needs the Holy Spirit to implant spiritual 
life and to work out a true repentance that need- 

82 



Conversion and Culture 



eth not to be repented of. Toward that every 
teacher should work. 

How young can a child be converted ? To that 
there is no dogmatic reply possible, saving to say 
that no limit can be placed. Some children are 
filled with the Holy Spirit from their birth, as 
was John the Baptist. Some children seem to 
have been influenced by the believing prayer of 
their parents even before their birth day, and this 
is the normal condition for the children of Chris- 
tian-believing parents. Other children come into 
the kingdom so young that they themselves can- 
not set a date. They feel that they always were 
Christians, and, so far as their memory is con- 
cerned, this undoubtedly in many cases is true. 
A child may be converted even before he under- 
stands the difference between right and wrong, 
the meaning of pardon and resolution to do bet- 
ter. But, as a matter of fact, when we look into 
the history of Christian experience we find that 
the vast majority of church members date their 
conversion back to the early part of their life. 
They recognize that while they were in their 
teens the crucial change came. 

In speaking of this matter before the Presby- 
tery of Xew York, I made the statement that I 
believed that the majority of men present were 
converted before they were sixteen years old. 
There were present that dav about 140 ministers 

83 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



and elders. I ventured to ask those who had 
been converted at or under sixteen years of age 
to rise. One hundred and twenty men rose. To 
them it was evidently a great surprise that so 
overwhelming a majority of the largest Presby- 
tery in the land was really the result of child- 
conversion. 

Tabulations have been made all over the land 
to test this one question of the period of conver- 
sions among church members. I have seen one 
giving the age of decisive religious awakening of 
eighty-four men. The vast majority of these 
found the Saviour between sixteen and seven- 
teen years of age. 

A second table that has been published gives 
the age of conversion of 272 members of the 
Rock River Methodist Episcopal Conference, and 
here the immense majority came in at the age 
of sixteen. After nineteen years of age the fall- 
ing off in conversions is very great. Had these 
tables applied to women the ages would have 
been from one to two years under these,, because 
girls develop a little more rapidly at that time 
than boys. 

This shows where the church of to-day is re- 
cruited from. It is recruited from the childhood 
of yesterday. I cannot help feeling that if teach- 
ers at large were more faithful, even these tables 
would be changed and we should have children 

84 



Conversion and Culture 

coming into the kingdom at a more tender age 
than is indicated by these tabulations. Just here 
we strike a great difficulty : there are multitudes 
of teachers who have no definite idea of the ulti- 
mate aim in their work. If you should stop one 
of these teachers on her way to Sunday-school 
and say, " What are you aiming at to-day? " the 
reply would be, " To teach my lesson." If you 
pushed the inquiry farther and said, " What more 
are you aiming at?" many teachers would be 
somewhat confused and not know just what to 
reply. 

In my own school one time I was talking to 
one of the teachers who had a class of girls 
about twelve years of age. On asking her wheth- 
er they were Christians or not she said, " You 
don't expect such young girls to be Christians, 
do you ? " She was enlightened in that matter 
and her aim was sharpened and her devotion 
somewhat quickened, and the result was very 
soon in that class conversions and unions with 
the church. 

If teachers at large, and if parents at home, 
bent their aim and effort to win the scholars in 
their tender years to a childlike consecration to 
Christ, my personal belief is that the deciding 
point in future tabulations would be pushed much 
nearer early childhood. 

In spite of all that our Master said with regard 

85 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



to adults becoming as little children before they 
could enter the kingdom of Heaven, we have 
tacitly reversed that and feel that children must 
become adults before they can enter the king- 
dom of God. This is one of the sad miscon- 
ceptions of the Christian church. What we de- 
sire, therefore, to emphasize now. is this, that 
as soon as the child has become consciously a 
wrong-doer so soon should the effort be made 
to lead the child into conscious repentance and 
acceptance of Christ as Saviour and as Master. 
We want to bear in mind that so far as the 
Scripture record is concerned, some of the grand- 
est heroes were child-believers. David, the boy, 
was as grand a believer as David the man ; Dan- 
iel, young, was as stedfast as Daniel old; and 
Samuel, very young, as wondrously godly as 
Samuel in his riper years. What took place in 
Bible times takes place to-day, and ought to take 
place always wherever there are believers who are 
striving in behalf of the children. 

In this, our work, we must bear in mind that 
it is entirely beyond our power to regenerate a 
child. All the theological professors in the world 
cannot force a child's will. That is the prov- 
ince of the Holy Spirit. He must implant life 
to begin with — " Ye must be born not of the will 
of flesh nor of the will of man, but of the will 
of God through the Divine Spirit." Ours is 

86 



Conversion and Culture 

so to present truth to the child that the Divine 
Spirit can take that truth and through it work 
regeneration, and thus produce Christ-like char- 
acter. 

Will child-converts hold out? Well, those one 
hundred and twenty men in the Presbytery of 
New York held out. The majority testifying 
all over the land to their child experience in con- 
version have held out. Why, then, should we 
suppose that children starting in the future will 
not hold out? Never would they hold out in 
their own strength. Always will they hold out 
when sustained by divine grace. 

The Apostle Paul, thoroughly educated., and a 
man of extraordinary will power, exclaims, "Of 
mine own self I can do nothing;'" yet he also 
says confidently, " I can do all things through 
Christ who strengthened me." 

If in the church of the past the Divine Spirit 
has maintained spiritual life in children, is his 
arm shortened that he cannot do it in the future ? 
Years ago, seeing a testimony by the celebrated 
Charles Spurgeon that in his church child Chris- 
tians had held out better than those converted 
in mature years, I was led to look over my own 
church record, with which I was thoroughly 
familiar, and I found that the same story could 
be told there; that of those who were born into 
the kingdom in their early childhood and who 

87 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



then united with the church there were more, 
proportionately, who witnessed a good confession 
and who stood stedfast, than of those who had 
come into the church after the age of adolescence 
was completed. This may surprise us. But 
it ought not to surprise us because that is the 
divine way,, and the divine way is the true way; 
not until we return to the divine method shall 
we cease to make many and grievous mistakes 
in our work. 

All this indicates that if we so teach the truth 
as to impress mind and heart and conscience, 
the early and the latter rain of the Spirit will 
not be withheld. So soon as the Christian church 
does this largely, so soon will our primary classes 
turn out more teachers, preachers, missionaries, 
martyrs, and fewer drunkards, thieves, and mur- 
derers. What we need here is a great revival of 
faith on the part of adults, a greater prepared- 
ness on the part of ministers to see where their 
true harvest lies and where the most promising 
sphere of labor that is opening to them is to be 
found. 

Yet, alas, ten ministers will preach to adults 
where one delivers a sermon to a child, and ten 
ministers will be found ready to speak at a social 
union dinner or at some large function where 
adults gather, to one who would love to speak to 
children, and who is capable of doing so. Our 

88 



Conversion and Culture 



whole conception, from the theological seminary 
down, needs to be revolutionized so that we can 
see where the harvest is to be had and whence the 
church of the future is to be gathered in. 

If what we have presented so far be true, then 
every teacher should do three things : First, work 
for conversions. Focalize the teaching down 
to the point of reaching the child-will; secondly, 
not only should every teacher work for, but every 
teacher should watch for, this. Many a child has 
spiritual awakenings, and if the teacher would 
watch to see and then improve the crucial mo- 
ment, the child would be brought out into the 
light of conscious union with Christ. But though 
some teachers be working they are not watching. 
The result is that the opportunity comes and goes 
and the child lapses into a state of indifference 
worse than that which the child had occupied 
before ; for every aw r akening toward better things, 
unimproved, always results in retrogression and 
in the hardening of the heart of the one who 
has experienced it. A watchful teacher will see 
sometimes by the attitude of the careless child 
that something has come into the child's life dif- 
ferent from what had been found there before. 
Sometimes the very look in a child's face will 
show that the truth has struck home deep. There 
is your opportunity. That child should then be 
taken apart from the other children either at 

89 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



the close of the class or soon in the home in order 
that the feelings aroused and the desires awak- 
ened be led to exercise themselves in the right 
direction. Hundreds of scholars might be 
brought into the kingdom if only working teach- 
ers were also watchful teachers. 

In the third place, every teacher should be 
much in prayer. Prayer is either the biggest 
force in the world or it is the biggest farce in 
the world. There is no middle ground here pos- 
sible. Force or farce — which is it with you? 
If prayer goes no higher than the ceiling it is a 
farce. If prayer reaches God's throne and moves 
God's arm it is the most tremendous force we 
have. There be some teachers who pray as 
though it were more of a farce than a force. 
Their prayer is naturally powerless. They labor 
and toil, but there is no divine potency behind 
them. In the Subway on the front car you can 
see a man, no stronger than yourself perhaps. 
He throws a lever through a half circle and the 
train rushes on through the darkness. He throws 
that off and throws another lever cautiously and 
the whole train is brought to a standstill. Has 
he done that with his two feeble arms ? He could 
not start the train with his own physical force. 
The secret of that power is that he connects that 
train with the power-house, and the moment the 
lever is thrown the whole force of the power- 

90 



Conversion and Culture 



house is concentrated on that train. If the be- 
liever through prayer can bring himself into con- 
nection with the divine power-house, the whole 
divine power runs through the believer, and then, 
as the Apostle says, he can do all things through 
Christ who strengtheneth him. 

We say that the teacher should not only work 
for the child's conversion and watch for it. but 
should pray for it with prevailing prayer. That 
teacher is not doing her duty who does not daily 
mention every scholar in her class in prayer by 
name. Nehemiah prayed intensely that he might 
have the privilege of building the walls of Jeru- 
salem. The walls of child-soul are infinitely 
more important than the walls of Jerusalem ; and 
if we imitate him, only with more of intensity 
because of the value of our aim. the answer that 
came to him will be the answer that will come 
to us, opportunity, privilege, power, for the right 
accomplishment of our work. 

When the child has been brought to the blessed 
Master, then follows the duty and privilege of 
culture. The babe just born into this world has 
life, but it is feeble life, and it must be nourished. 
The child born in the kingdom must be cared for 
with tender care; and right here is where many 
teachers make their mistake. The child has per- 
haps joined the church and now the teacher 
washes her hands of responsibility and says, " She 

9 1 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 



is a member of the church." Has the goal in 
that child's life been reached? No, only the 
starting-point has been reached; therefore, from 
time of conversion and union with the church on, 
the teacher should aim to stimulate and rightly 
direct the unfolding of this implanted divine na- 
ture. 

Here comes in the whole matter of teaching 
the child how to pray, how to read the Bible, how 
to read devotional books, how to behave in the 
house of God. how to prepare for the Sunday- 
school lesson, how to resist temptation, how to 
do a thousand things that belong to the child 
Christian life. If parents always did this, the 
responsibility of the teacher would be very small 
comparatively, but, alas, the majority of parents 
do not do this work, and the result is that upon 
the teacher falls this grave responsibility. 

There are thousands of children in every city 
to-day who never get one word of spiritual guid- 
ance except from the lips of their teachers. The 
whole matter of the spiritual nurture of the child 
is one of exceedingly great complexity and needs 
our careful study, our enthusiastic work, our 
ceaseless watchfulness and our believing prayer. 

These two lines of labor, therefore, are the 
combined goal of the teacher, the bringing of 
life into the child and the nurture of life after 
it has been implanted. 

92 



Conversion and Cultu7 r e 



Finally., why does the age of conversion prac- 
tically cease after sixteen or seventeen years of 
age? For many reasons. First, because those 
who pass beyond that age unconverted have in 
many cases been touched by the Spirit and have 
resisted. Hardened hearts are more difficult to 
reach later on than tender hearts, and stubborn 
w T ills that have consciously resisted are more dif- 
ficult to overcome than pliant wills that are ready 
to yield. Second, at the upper age of adolescence 
other interests crowd in, as, for example, with 
boys and girls of the middle classes, the necessity 
of earning their own living. Thoughts are cen- 
tered more on what the Germans call bread and 
butter science. In the third place, matrimony 
looms up, and the boys begin to think rightly of 
mating, and the girls also. Sooner or later, in 
the majority of cases, the married life begins, and 
then cares multiply and expenses increase and 
there is less time for definite thought about re- 
ligious duty, and all the time the conscience is 
hardened and the mind is accustomed to turn 
away from things spiritual to things material. The 
harvest time is passing. 

I know that if Chapman and Alexander come, 
there are conversions, but how few compared to 
the multitudes who never hear the voice of evan- 
gelist or of singer and never come to Carnegie 
Hall or Metropolitan Opera House, or even the 

93 



Knowing and Teaching the Scholar 

tent gathering. So it comes to pass that in our 
work as religious workers we must burn upon 
our minds the thought that our time is now, that 
the church of the future is before us, that we 
must be conscientious and intelligent workers. 
But with the Divine Spirit on our side the work 
should be so blest that the church of the future 
shall number, not twenty percent of the Sunday- 
school constituency, but more nearly one hun- 
dred percent. 



94 



JAN 3 ]91Q 



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jies 

kTION 

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